1. Technical Field
An aspect of the present invention relates to a printing apparatus, more specifically, a printing apparatus to print images on fabrics.
2. Related Art
Conventionally, a printing apparatus for printing an image on a piece of fabric, having a platen to hold the fabric, an inkjet head to eject inks onto the fabric, a carriage to move the inkjet head, an operation panel, and a set of colored inks, has been known. Such a printing apparatus is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 2004-268506. According to the printing apparatus, an image represented by a piece of print data is formed on a piece of fabric as the carriage is moved in a main scanning direction and the platen is moved in an auxiliary direction.
For another example, in United States Patent Application Publication No. US 2005/0179708 A1, a printing apparatus having a plurality of platens to hold a plurality of pieces of fabric aligned on a same horizontal plane is disclosed. According to the latter publication, two images are successively formed on the respective pieces of fabric in inks ejected from an inkjet head so that the images can be formed successively on the plurality of pieces of fabric in shorter lead time.
Prior to and after a printing operation, an inkjet printing apparatus conducts a pre-printing operation and an after-printing operation. That is, when the inkjet printing apparatus completes a printing operation, the carriage with the inkjet heads is moved to a maintenance position, and a nozzle surface of the inkjet head is wiped and capped (after-print operation), in order to prevent the nozzle surface from being dried out. When the inkjet printing apparatus starts a printing operation, the cap covering the nozzle surface of the inkjet head is detached, the uncovered nozzle surface is wiped, and the carriage is moved to a print-start position, in which the inkjet head starts ejecting inks (pre-print operation).